The Bugle Call: Song of War - Vol. 12 Ch. 37 - Dusk

[Ignore]

darn, as the marvel version of Peter Maximoff would have said "What?? you did not see that coming?"

Check my comments from the last chapter

 

[alacaelum]

That's the garland ramus no? We've seen her back in the war with bunch of fax rami.

Yeah, it is Garland.

 

[alacaelum]

I wonder if the authour will try to redeem Poppy later, if so they're gonna have to do a lot.

Also what the odds of Muira's corpse being puppeted to lure Lucas into a trap?

I don't think the authors have the writing weakness of needing to make everyone redeemable.

They have directed their story to have hopefulness and cynicism in equal parts, which is a very tricky thing to do... but they came all this way holding it very well, so I doubt they plan to fumble that now, just to try and redeem the irredeemable.

 

[JackdawMinuet]

Is it strange that I sympathize and pity poppy? No kid with a past like that was ever gonna grow up right. If anyone’s to blame, it’s the adults that let her down.

 

[alacaelum]

Is it strange that I sympathize and pity poppy? No kid with a past like that was ever gonna grow up right. If anyone’s to blame, it’s the adults that let her down.

I see your point, and it is true... her education clearly was twisted and unhealthy... but people aren't made only by nurture.

Lucas has issues, truth be told, but he still is empathetic, he still is able to think and care about others, and he grew up as an errand boy for a group of mercenaries.

He saw them kill, rape, and plunder, but never desired to be part of that, but Poppy... her nurturing may not have been healthy... but it hardly had the same hardships.

And even if you would say the apathy had a toll on her mind, which is more than just possible admittedly... since we first saw her, she has shown a level of spite that can not be chalked up to just "bad education".

But to be clear... I do think that if she had a more solid childhood, she could have been a better person, I don't think she is a natural psychopath... but that is the extent of the leeway I can give her, she is a coward, spiteful, and malignantly egoistic, her little speech of how she will live the way she wants... that is not resolution, the other ramus inner monologue is right, she just jumped at the first chance given to her, and she did it because she hates Lucas and co, why... because she could have esked the Pope for all that, and he would had given it to her.

She chose to betray them, and unless in the most deep of circumstances... there is always something of us in our choices.

 

[Friendly-Sentence710]

man, poppy really betrayed them so she can be a weeb for life.

I can fix her.

 

[Ignore]

I see your point, and it is true... her education clearly was twisted and unhealthy... but people aren't made only by nurture.

Lucas has issues, truth be told, but he still is empathetic, he still is able to think and care about others, and he grew up as an errand boy for a group of mercenaries.

He saw them kill, rape, and plunder, but never desired to be part of that, but Poppy... her nurturing may not have been healthy... but it hardly had the same hardships.

And even if you would say the apathy had a toll on her mind, which is more than just possible admittedly... since we first saw her, she has shown a level of spite that can not be chalked up to just "bad education".

Lucas seems to have brainwashed most of the fanbase. He has outright stated that he enjoys controlling people and being a general. The reasons he wants to leave the battlefield are:
-Contempt for soldiers (his lack of regard for human life unnerved even Udo)
-Risk to himself and his personal friends
-Because he prefers for an audience to be paying attention to his musical skills.

Poppy grew up with modern sensibilities and cultural mores. The only options she's been presented with are living as a modern Hikkikomori, or living in 1100AD. Lucas murdered her estranged parents in front of her with zero remorse, and she's been hanging out on battlefields, so no great shock she impulsively tried to get revenge. She's selfish, but out of desperation; it's kind of funny that she's viewed as icky for her rather redeeming quality of being honest about her motives.

 

[Raitoiro]

Everyone's focusing on Poppy, and obviously fuck Poppy, but personally I'm more interested in the other Ramus (the one with the branch masking their eyes).

Their allegiance seems very troubled, outwardly they work for the futurists and by extension the empire, but I wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be a traitor working to undermine the futurists.

Obviously in that chapter they deal a big blow to the Pope faction, helping the futurists. But that faction was doom to fail anyway, the soldiers and the lords resentment had grown too big, and the futurists were gonna attack no matter what. Making the situation blow early could actually have limited the damages.

Then the way they act during that chapter is really suspicious. They go on and on about how the futurists are actually afraid of Lucas, that they may seems powerful but actually his power work on them, and in fact they've predicted that they will loose to Lucas and the Pope.
That's an awful lot of compromising information to give the enemy when you're still in an uncertain situation.

That Ramus probably has the ability to see the future to some extent, so IMO they likely planned to kill Miura in front of Lucas to make him flower then leak info to him so he resolves himself to fight the futurists. Moreover, they made sure to have someone to shift the blame onto so Lucas' hatred is directed at someone else and they can ally with him later on.

That why the first thing they do is explaining that that situation is the result of Poppy acting on her own and not following the plan (yet they aren't flustered in the least), then go on and on about Poppy's ridiculous reasons to betray/kill them.
That way Lucas hatred for Poppy grows which likely helps with the flowering, and his focus is all her. It even works in a meta sense, everyone here is hating on Poppy completely ignoring the person behind the coup.

Finally, it makes no sense to not inform the soldier tasked with restraining them that cutting Coura's neck is stupid, similarly the way they tried to deal with Oscar makes no sense. So they were likely planning to let most of the papal Ramus escape from the start.

Part of it, like killing Miura and outing Poppy could be part of the futurists plan to make Luka flower to then use him. But I don't think leaking those infos and letting him escape is, so I'm expecting that Ramus to be a traitor. Probably someone they're forced to reluctantly ally with later on.

 

[alacaelum]

Lucas seems to have brainwashed most of the fanbase. He has outright stated that he enjoys controlling people and being a general. The reasons he wants to leave the battlefield are:
-Contempt for soldiers (his lack of regard for human life unnerved even Udo)
-Risk to himself and his personal friends
-Because he prefers for an audience to be paying attention to his musical skills.

Poppy grew up with modern sensibilities and cultural mores. The only options she's been presented with are living as a modern Hikkikomori, or living in 1100AD. Lucas murdered her estranged parents in front of her with zero remorse, and she's been hanging out on battlefields, so no great shock she impulsively tried to get revenge. She's selfish, but out of desperation; it's kind of funny that she's viewed as icky for her rather redeeming quality of being honest about her motives.

In this chapter, she outright said she didn't care for her "parents"... that the only thing she cared about was that room.

You call that "redeeming" quality?

I remember Lucas' bad parts, I have no illusion about the depths of his psyche, I know he has a damaged mind in his own way.

But he is someone who is trying to be better... can you say the same about Poppy? Does his little hissy fit really seem reasonable? She knows she wasn't a child to the futurists, she knows they only took her because of her power, she only "loved" them for what they could give her, she isn't resentful about their deaths, she is resentful about the possessions she lost.

She doesn't want to improve, she wants to wallow in her own filth, and yes... I know this puts her in a way in the same ballpark as the clone ramus... but contrary to him... she has made decisions to stay as she is.

I can empathize with her, I am only human, and I can see the threads of what could have been... but I have no sympathy for her because I can see where her decisions start and end.

But to be clear... despite my overly caustic tone, I have no intention of convincing you otherwise, but I won't be dissuaded from my opinion on Poppy.

 

[Friendly-Sentence710]

Poppy grew up with modern sensibilities and cultural mores. The only options she's been presented with are living as a modern Hikkikomori, or living in 1100AD. Lucas murdered her estranged parents in front of her with zero remorse, and she's been hanging out on battlefields, so no great shock she impulsively tried to get revenge. She's selfish, but out of desperation; it's kind of funny that she's viewed as icky for her rather redeeming quality of being honest about her motives.

except she's not mad about her parents, who tossed her back to 1100AD, she's mad about her room and her games/manga. If Lucas hadn't torched the school where Poppy had her room - you know, the same school where absolutely fucked space-plant breeding experiments with unwilling subjects abducted from the surrounding country side were taking place, Poppy wouldn't be mad at Lucas.

Look, I have big crush on our freckled scaredy cat, but she's selling out everyone around her so she can go back to reading manga in her room - and arguably its even worse, she's selling everyone out for a vague promise that she'll get to go back to reading manga in the room, its probably more likely she'll end up with a knife in her back. The manipulator even laughs at how Poppy thinks she's making her own choices when all she's doing it dancing to a different piper.
She's objectively a dumb, horrible person.
I can totally fix her though.

 

[se4ring]

Wow... I didn't think I could despise Poppy more than I already had... I am impressed.

You know a funny thing... i kind had caught up on how "modern" Poppy's situation seemed, everything she said are the signs of a hikikomori, not the depressed sort but the egomaniac type, but i left it to the side because well... manga, fantasy story, and i had caught too that there was some "altered time" aspect at that point.

And you know one more thing... I just realised the author must have planned Miura's death from the beginning... after the flowering was revealed as a possibility, and that it enhanced Rami's powers, it became pretty clear that the moment Miura flowered, his particular set of abilities would be an enormous imbalance in the story.

We saw he wouldn't be invincible, and there are a few people here that could deal with him... but that was just the first stage of flowering, imagine when he could tap on that power freely... yeah, even the asshole from the empire would have difficulty fighting him, especially coupled with Zoe and Lucas as support.

What Oscar said to Lucas was... actually quite sweet of him.

Isn't every sign of flowering but Lucas' basically an immediate red flag then? Most powers in this story are kinda unbeateable if you push their powerlevel enough.